Anthony Bourdain Is Writing a Comic Book Based on Samurai Ghost Stories

Anthony Bourdain is writing a comic book about chefs who tell each other scary food stories, which seems about right. Vulture reports the comic, called Hungry Ghosts, echoes a samurai warrior tradition of telling progressively scarier stories to other samurai warriors to try to freak them out—you know, battle prep. The game was called 100 Candles. Bourdain will replace the samurai with chefs for Hungry Ghosts—perhaps the chefs will also be dead?—and the stories will be about food.

The comic will be released in four issues from Berger Books, a new comic book line from famed Vertigo editor Karen Berger. Bourdain's co-writer is Joel Rose, who worked with Bourdain on Get Jiro!, a futuristic graphic novel about a sushi chef who wages a ruthless culinary war and slashes patrons' throats. Gritty stuff.

Bourdain's got some good scary food stories from his own travels, including the "fur, sand, shit" flavor of three-day-old warthog, and his travels to Russia to talk life and politics with Boris Nemtsov, a Putin critic who was killed in front of the Kremlin a year later. Bourdain also once owned an impressive comic book collection, but he said he sold it off for drugs at a "low point in the '80s." So basically, he's been living his life for the soul purpose of telling scary chef stories. Hungry Ghosts will be available January 31.

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